What Happened on Fox Street (2 page)

“M
O!”

“Merce!”

Dodging between the parked cars, Mo tore across the street. Mercedes flung long golden arms around her.

“Merce! You look so different!”

“Mo! You look precisely the same!”

“No I don't!” Mo always talked too loudly around Mercedes Walcott—she couldn't help it. “I grew a whole inch.”

Mercedes had always been taller, but this year she'd grown so much that Mo had to step back to look
her in the eye. Her laugh was the same, though—head back, gap teeth flashing white against her gingersnap-colored skin. Everything about Mercedes Walcott crackled and bit. The only soft thing about her was her hair. Speaking of her hair…

“Merce! You're bald!”

“Really?” Mercedes widened her eyes and ran a hand over the top of her head. “Crudsicles!” Mercedes laughed again. She adored teasing Mo. And Mo didn't mind. Much.

“You shaved it? How come? And how come you're here so early?”

“I took a plane.” Mercedes yawned. “Then a cab.” She plucked at her jeans, which were black and, Mo suddenly noticed, the precise kind the popular girls at her school wore. Her tank top was black, too, with little sparkles around the edge. Mo smoothed her own baggy, wrinkled shorts.

“Wow,” she said. “Cool.”

Every June before this—and there had been five so far—Mercedes had ridden the Greyhound out of Cincinnati. Da would send the money for the ticket, and Merce would jump down the bus steps holding one practically empty suitcase. Every August she staggered back up, that suitcase weighted with all the
books Da gave her. Da also tried to plump up her only grandchild, but that never took.

“My new stepfather,” Mercedes said now, as if those two words carried as much meaning as a whole chapter book. Her mother, who'd never had a husband, had gotten married that winter.

“He's rich?” Mo asked.

“We're
comfortable
,” Mercedes replied. “He's got avalanches of money, but don't ever say ‘rich.' That's ghetto. You say ‘comfortable.'”

“Oh.”

Mercedes had a way of raising her chin that elongated her entire self, as if she were about to turn into a human steeple.

“Not that he corrects me,” she said. “I have to admit, he's too smart for that.”

“Oh.” Mo smoothed her wrinkled shorts again. “Soooo, you don't like him?”

“Did I say that? If only it was that simple.”

Mo was saved from saying “Oh” again by a voice that had set hundreds of schoolchildren quaking like wind chimes in a high wind.

“Mo Wren!”

Mo told herself that Da didn't try to make her name sound like “moron” on purpose. All the same, she
was grateful that Da had retired and there was zero chance of ever having the woman for a teacher. Da was tall as a man. Her beautiful skin had a midnight sheen that reminded Mo of silk or satin, the sort of delicious fabric you long to lay your cheek against.

Her voice, however, was the kind of wool that rubs your neck raw.

“I wasted time, now time doth waste me!” cried Da, who, if she ever went on a quiz show and got Shakespeare for her category, would become an instant millionaire. “Your beans and rice are getting cold, Mo Wren!”

Da's red beans. Mo would choose them for her last meal on Earth. She was already up the front steps before she noticed Mercedes still rooted to the sidewalk. Her best friend stared across the street, past the parked cars gleaming in the sun and Mrs. Steinbott's roses blooming like a piece of heaven, directly at the porch of the tiny, blue-white old lady, who stared steadily back. For a brief, bizarre moment, Mo saw something identical in the way they cocked their heads, as if listening to a bit of music just out of range of everyone else's hearing.

“Mercey!” Mo called, breaking the spell. Her best friend whirled around and ran to join her.

B
ACK WHEN
D
A STILL TAUGHT SCHOOL
, she'd stalked her classroom in shoes adorned with buckles and buttons and rhinestone bows. Da didn't just have smarts—she had style, which made it especially disturbing to watch her clomp down her front hall now in shoes heavy and ugly as miniature coffins.

Stumps. That's what was inside those special shoes. This past winter, Da's sugar had acted up again, and she'd gone into the hospital, missing her daughter's wedding at the last minute. Not only that. When she came out, she left behind four toes.

Clump da clump da clump.
Da's shoes and cane beat a
slow rhythm. Mo swallowed hard. Not that she was the squeamish sort. How could she be, living with Dottie, who regularly ate boogers and scabs? The sight of a run-over squirrel? The stink of Baby Baggott's poopy Pampers? Business as usual.

But something about a three-toed foot made her knees wobble. Mo liked things whole. She refused to begin a jigsaw puzzle unless she knew all the pieces were there. A puzzle was nothing compared to your own body.

Da had the table set with her good dishes, yet something wasn't quite right. Normally this house was all about neat corners and polished surfaces, but today it had a dull, unwashed look. Mercedes ran a finger through the dust furring the windowsill and frowned.

But the food! Da's cooking was like an excellent mystery story, with spicy clues and sweet clues and then a great whammy of an ending when it all came together. Mo had just put her napkin in her lap—Da was a stickler for manners and posture—and picked up her fork when the glasses began to shiver and the dishes to tremble. A redheaded torpedo fired into the room, scoring a direct hit on Mercedes.

“You're here!” The Wild Child squashed her face in the vicinity of Mercedes's belly button. “I thought
you'd never get here!”

Mercedes managed to peel Mo's little sister off her, all except for a sour-apple lollipop, which hung suspended from her black tank top. Dottie retrieved it and graciously offered it to Da.

“Oh, wait, you can't eat candy. You're diabolic.”

“Diabetic!” corrected Mo.

Wrinkling her nose, Mercedes peered down at Dottie's knotty red mane. “Eeyoo! What's that? A fly that got caught and buzzed itself to death?” Mercedes did not exactly return Dottie's affection. In fact, Mercedes preferred not to associate with anyone under four feet tall.

Dottie scrambled up into a chair and lovingly spread Mercedes's napkin across her own lap. She wore an enormous T-shirt advertising hot sauce and, given how much she hated underwear, probably nothing else.

“Your head's like a bowling ball,” she said pleasantly. “Dude, it's hot in here. It's hotter than h—”

“Lord give me strength!” Da's face was arguing with itself, her mouth frowning while her eyes danced. “When was the last time those hands met soap and water? No one sits at my table with hands like that!”

She hauled Dottie into the kitchen. Mercedes and
Mo took the opportunity to clean their plates and slip out the front door.

The heart-shaped leaves of a big ancient lilac drenched Da's front porch in shade. If you sat here for a while, Da would pop out with lemonade, or a Band-Aid for the splinter you always got from a floorboard. Those rough, gaping floorboards had a ferocious appetite—over the years Mo had played here, they'd swallowed down more Barbie shoes and game pieces than she could count.

Her mother used to sit here with Da, listening to ball games on the radio. Mo could remember that. Mr. Wren watched on TV, but Da and Mrs. Wren claimed the more you had to imagine, the more exciting a thing was.

“Mo?”

“Yeah?”

“I just had a funny thought. You know all the toys we lost down the porch? Not to mention all the candy wrappers and Popsicle sticks we pushed through the cracks.” Mercedes sounded wistful, which was disturbing, since she was not the wistful type. “Imagine someday an archaeologist excavates down there. What would he or she think?'

“That it was the royal burial ground of an ancient
civilization where Uno cards were sacred.”

“Where they worshipped tiny plastic shoes.” Mercedes laughed, and Mo forgot to be disturbed.

“Not to mention peach pits and repulsive Band-Aids.”

Oh, it was good to have Mercedes back!

“Come on,” said Mo. “I've got the Den all stocked, and we seriously need to catch up.”

T
HEY SPED PAST
M
S
. H
UGG'S
pink house and then the Petrones', where a hearse took up the whole driveway. Mrs. P styled hair at a funeral parlor, and when she worked late they let her drive the hearse home instead of taking the bus. The Baggott boys—named for signs of the zodiac because Mrs. Baggott believed they'd one day be stars, ha ha—were giving one another rides in a shopping cart stolen from the E-Z Dollar. Pi Baggott, a year older than Mercedes and Mo, practiced skateboard tricks on the edge of the Crater.

“Hey!” he called, flipping his board upright. It was strange. Up until this summer, Mo had never bothered
to distinguish one Baggott from another. But all of a sudden, Pi stood out. Pi was impossible to ignore. “Welcome back!” he told Mercedes.

“I can't believe the city didn't fix that pothole yet!” she replied. “It's seriously bigger than last year!”

“Hello to you, too,” Pi said.

The daisies were in full bloom, and the butter-and-eggs, too. Mo climbed over the guardrail, careful to avoid the thistles. On the other side, a path meandered down the hillside. Scraggly as they were, the trees clinging to the slope didn't mind if you grabbed their trunks to keep from slipping. As you descended, rocks jutted out like the snouts of buried dinosaurs. And everywhere you looked, the landscape was decorated with trash.

People—no one on Fox Street, Mo was certain, but other people, who were lazy and ignorant—had the notion the ravine was a free dump and heaved all sorts of things over the guardrail, right past the sign that read
$100 FINE FOR LITTERING
. Mo spotted a wheel-less bike, a broken high chair, a torn lampshade. Ghostly garbage bags fluttered in the trees.

Ghostly, but in a good way—this was the feeling Mo always got here. Climbing down the hill, she took her time, making as little noise as she could, her eyes
peeled. Fox Street had gotten its name for a reason, and sometimes, especially toward dusk, the air took on a mysterious, deep red texture. At those moments, Mo felt a beautiful pair of amber-colored eyes watching her. She'd sense a rust-colored tail, tip dipped in cream, disappearing just behind her. But no matter how quickly she turned, Mo never saw anything.

Still. Never once did she come down here without being on fox lookout. Light and quick and shy as they were—Mo had read a good deal about foxes—they always saw you before you saw them.

Mo didn't keep secrets. She disliked them nearly as much as she did surprises, which is to say a great deal. And yet, deep inside her, wrapped up as carefully as a fragile glass egg, she cherished, if not exactly a secret, a belief. One she had never confided to anyone. Not even Mercedes.

“Maureen Jewel Wren! Come on!”

Mo believed foxes lived down here. And that they knew she was looking for them.

Or, at least, one fox knew. A certain one, graceful and beautiful, that she had seen in her dreams. And though it might take a very long time, if Mo was patient enough, and persistent and faithful enough, someday that fox was going to reveal herself. To Mo.

“MO!”

“I'm coming!”

Mercedes had already twirled the combination lock on the toolbox and set out cans of Tahitian Treat and bags of chips on the flat rock they used for a table. The Den was a hollow in the side of the hill, not quite big enough to stand up in, shaded and half hidden by an outcrop of rock. Mercedes and Mo had decorated it with things thrown over the guardrail, including the two only slightly ripped beanbag chairs on which they sat.

At the bottom of the ravine, across the stream, stretched the vast city Metropark. Mo could hear the distant cheers of a softball game—the one Mr. Wren was supposed to be playing.

“I can't tell you,” Mercedes said, handing Mo a can, “how much I've been looking forward to this very moment.”

They clinked cans. Down at the invisible baseball game, a cheer went up.

“Especially since,” Mercedes went on, “this is my last summer coming.”

Tahitian Treat shot out Mo's nose. “Whaaaaa?”

“It's a miracle I got up here at all. My stepfather registered me for one of those enrichment camps where
you learn calculus in the morning and French in the afternoon and for extra big fun you take a trip to a museum. He says a girl with my potential shouldn't waste a whole summer doing nothing.”

Mo wiped her sticky chin with a leaf. “Nothing! Is he mental?”

Mercedes nodded.

“It's useless trying to explain to him about Fox Street. He's all about getting ahead in the world. He grew up poor, but he worked hard and took advantage of every opportunity and became an attorney and blah blah blah.”

Mercedes paused. She gazed at a spot somewhere over Mo's shoulder. “It's…it's weird, Mo. But I'm afraid he's infecting me.”

From down on the ball field came a huge, collective moan.

“Infecting?”

Mercedes knotted her fingers. “With the snob virus. Monette and I, we always lived in such butt-ugly apartments. The last one, if you sat on the toilet you had to put your feet in the tub. After you checked for roaches. But now we live in his stupid mini-mansion, and I…I don't know.” Mercedes kept her eyes on that spot just beyond Mo. “You get used to
nice things. Real fast.”

Mo hugged her knees. She searched for the right words.

“But Fox Street is nice.”

Mercedes pursed her lips. For no reason, a little rock broke loose from the hillside and tumbled down past them.

“When I got here last night, everything looked so, I don't know. Used up. I told myself it'd look better in the morning, but…” Mercedes swallowed. “It looks even worse.”

One day last winter, Mo had been hurrying down Fox Street when she'd hit a patch of ice and whomped over flat on her back. All the breath went out of her. Her lungs refused to work, and for an endless moment, Mo lay staring up at the gray metal sky, abandoned by her own body. By the whole universe. This is how lonesome dying feels, she'd thought in terror, just before a great pain stabbed her chest and delicious, frigid air flooded all through her.

That was how it felt now. A shock, and then an outburst.

“Looks!”
she said. “You said ‘looks.' But
looks
don't matter. It's what's underneath that counts!”

“This gets worse,” warned Mercedes.

“How could it? You're disrespecting Fox Street! That means you're disrespecting me, not to mention Da! And speaking of Da, I guess your stepfather—by the way, doesn't this bonehead even have a name? I guess Mr. X doesn't care if he breaks Da's heart, because that's what'll happen if you quit spending summers here.”

Mercedes ran her fingertips over her gleaming head. “You didn't even ask me why I shaved my head.”

“I did so. You ignored me.”

“I did it to make him furious. He's always telling me I look just like my mom, and in his eyes, that's the biggest compliment in the universe.”

Mercedes jumped up and started pacing on the edge of the Den, sending up dust clouds.

“He makes her so happy! It drives me bonkers! And now she can afford to quit her dumb job and go to college, the way she always dreamed.” Mercedes paced back and forth so fast Mo began to get dizzy, then came to a sudden stop. “It's extremely challenging,” she said quietly, “to keep hating him.”

Mercedes had never known her father. When Monette had discovered she was pregnant, she'd moved away from Fox Street and never looked back. She refused to even say who he was—he was sweet and
he was gone, that was all the information Mercedes had. Here was yet one more way Merce and Mo were alike, beside having identical initials, and being born the very same autumn, and both adoring Fox Street: They were both half orphans.

“He wants me to call him Dad. Ha! They'll fix the Crater before I call him that.”

“What
is
his name?” Mo asked.

“Cornelius!” Mercedes cried. “Cornelius Christian Cunningham!”

They looked at each other and burst out laughing.

“Three-C!”

“Lord give me strength!” piped a voice, and Dottie butt skidded down beside them. A licorice whip drooped from her mouth like an extra tongue. Her hair not only was brushed, it had a ribbon in it, making her look like a stray someone had attempted to dress up for a dog show.

“You're more persistent than the plague.” Mercedes wiped her eyes. All the merriment drained out of her.

“You all right, Mercey?”

“Do I look like I'm all right?” Mercedes sank back down on her beanbag. When Dottie nestled close, Mercedes didn't even shove her off.

What would it be like never to know one of your
parents? Dottie claimed she had memories of their mother, but she'd only been three when it happened, practically not even human yet, and she also claimed she could read the minds of cats, and fly when no one was looking. She wanted to remember, Mo knew. Could you need something you'd never had, the way you did food, longing for it even before you'd had your first taste? And which was better—having no memories, or memories that made your heart swell with sadness? And—

“That was just the appetizer bad news.” Mercedes's voice broke in on her thoughts. “Here's the main-course disaster.”

It was quiet now. The ball game must have ended. To calm herself, Mo tried to imagine baby foxes curled up pointy nose to bushy tail in their den.

“I told them I was coming up here this summer if I had to walk the whole way, and they said they understood. I know Monette does. He was probably lying. But they both made me promise one thing before I left.”

“What?” Dottie whispered. “What did you promise?”

“To talk Da into selling her house and moving to Cincinnati.”